Archive for the ‘automobile’ Category

Big Oil’s Great Land Grab (Reprinted From Sierra Club)

Thursday, August 28th, 2008

Did you know that oil companies are already sitting on 68 million acres of leases that they aren’t even drilling? Which kind of makes you wonder: Why are Big Oil and its allies suddenly desperate to get their hands on the last few places that are still protected — our natural treasures, wildlife refuges, and pristine coastlines? They wouldn’t use the concerns caused by high gas prices as an excuse to grab it ALL, would they?

Click here to see the map!

Big Oil and its allies would like you to think that more drilling will ease your pain at the pump, but that’s not the truth.

The bottom line is this: More oil drilling will not lower gas prices or create energy independence - it will only make the world’s richest oil companies richer.

Check out our map showing how much of our country Big Oil already has.

Average Americans are being squeezed by high energy prices, and the oil companies are taking advantage to push their long-term drilling agenda. They have been spreading a map full of lies though the Internet.

Help us counter their propaganda — pass this map and the truth along to your friends and ask them to pass it along too.

Sincerely,

Greg Haegele
Director of Conservation

The New Zealand Water Car, Fuel Cell Cars, National Debt, The Iraq War and Obama’s Pastor

Tuesday, May 27th, 2008

Try to find the connection before looking for the answer at: Mark Joyner’s Atomic Mind Bombs Blog:

(I’d like to personally thank the mainstream media for ensuring that I’m far more familiar with Obama’s pastor than I am with his energy policies.)

We need to pick up the pace, folks. Our governments are moving on this, but not nearly fast enough.

What are you going to do about it?
I think some of the people who commented on his blog got the idea: No investors, no patents = not a good product.

As you can see, Mark Joyner looked for conclusive test data which showed a reduction of energy used or a reduction of pollutants created. This should give you a clear answer on that technology.

Now, do a Google search for any of the following terms: HHO, Brown’s Gas, Water Car. You will end up with hundreds of websites selling e-books on how to build a water car. Why aren’t they shut down? Because the sites are selling a book, which is protected in the United States under freedom of speech. If they were selling the actual product, the business would fall under much more scrutiny, depending on where it is based.

This is just another warning to not confuse wishful thinking with productivity. The water car will probably disappear like cold fusion.

For some productive, real solutions, see the blog entry on Energy Saving Systems.

This Car Makes the Prius Look Like a Hummer!

Tuesday, May 27th, 2008

This is not a prototype - it’s a production model car! Pretty sharp, until you are rear-ended by a Hummer. That’s why you won’t want to laugh too hard when you are passing up the gas station…

Running Your Car on Water

Friday, May 23rd, 2008

I recently visited a couple websites which tried to explain how to run a car on water. The sites are selling e-books or manuals on how to do the conversion yourself for a few hundred dollars. They even claim that you will qualify for Federal tax credits for converting to a “hybrid” car, as this one infers:

http://water-for-gas-reviews.com/RunYourCarOnWater.html

(I do not even want to link to them on the fear that it will legitimize their scheme, but you can make your own decisions.)

I won’t even address the possible trouble with the IRS on this topic, since in effect you are designating your car as a a hybrid without any certification. Check the tax code yourself on the IRS.GOV website. You will have to stretch your, and your auditor’s imagination a bit to get that one.

After deciphering the poorly written explanations of how the technology is supposed to work, it appears that the proponents (shall we call them snake-oil salesmen?) are telling you to use your car’s electricity to create electrolysis, or the process of breaking water down into its component parts of hydrogen and oxygen. Hopefully, they have two paths of collection for the gases so they remain separated prior to injection into the fuel line, but I doubt it. That would be quite a modification to do by yourself.

Then, some of these site discuss the resultant gas, HHO as increasing the combustion rate of engines. I wonder why the automobile manufacturers couldn’t figure that one out? Oh, I forgot - these sites are implying that the automakers are knowingly creating inefficient cars! If that were the case, Toyota wouldn’t have had to sell its Prius to conquer the fuel-efficient car market - Toyota could have done this couple-hundred-dollar modification itself and saved the money on the hybrid drive system and the expensive batteries. Of course, that’s part of the conspiracy - Toyota wants to sell these expensive cars to us unsuspecting customers!

Another thing that concerns me, is that if this system does inject hydrogen into the combustion process, wouldn’t that create more moisture in the engine? Yes, moisture is created in gasoline and diesel combustion too, and can be a major problem if you don’t run your engine long enough to create the heat necessary to evaporate the moisture from the engine and exhaust systems. This is called wet stacking and will reduce the engine’s life. I suspect that if the gas-to-water system really works, then it would only aggravate that problem.

Another consideration is whether the hydrogen adds power to the fuel-air mix? Maybe it adds a little bit, but since energy is neither created nor destroyed, it had to come from somewhere. Did it come from the water? No - water is a stable molecule which does not burn, and thus, does not give any energy via combustion. Then, the extra energy had to come from the hydrogen, right? Yes, it did. But the hydrogen was separated from water by adding energy via the electrolysis process. That energy came from the car battery, which was charged by taking energy from the drive train, which derives it from the engine, which is powered by the gasoline or diesel fuel. Since a perpetual motion machine has never been developed due to frictional and heat losses, we have to assume there are losses in this system too. Reference the Wikepedia article on HHO, which clearly states: “The energy required to generate the oxyhydrogen always exceeds the energy released by combusting it. (See Electrolysis of water:Efficiency).”

This would be similar to a homeowner trying to generate his own electricity by buying an electric motor connected to his home utility grid, and connecting it to a generator into which he plugs his appliances. Sure he generates electricity, but the power ultimately comes from the utility grid, and he loses some of the power due to friction in the drive train between the motor and generator, and the resistive heat losses of the circuits. By the way, I have seen this proposed on the internet as a way of “generating free electricity.” The inventor of that system, like the inventor of the gas-to-water system, also mysteriously disappeared due to another conspiracy.

Here’s my challenge: While the engineers reading this are probably agreeing with me, the snake-oil salesmen are probably outraged.

I would love to hear comments from both sides of this argument, and I will publish all opinions as long as they are not SPAM or overtly commercial.

Let’s see if someone convinces me and I wind up eating crow on this issue!